"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of
the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Fact checking modern opinions and assertions regarding
Second Amendment history and development by direct comparison with Founding Era facts - the original understanding of its purpose, meaning, and intent.

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, Professor Randy Barnett posts that the Joyce Foundation funded Second Amendment Research Center at Ohio State University has folded. A big Aloha to OSU's 2nd Amendment Center, one of the Joyce Foundation's attempt's to buy historical creds for the proposition that the Second Amendment and gun control are mutually exclusive.

Amusing anecdote: The center's director, Saul Cornell, apparently selected the term "gun" to be used as a keyword in searching for period documents to be placed in the Center's digital archive. This was a poor choice in trying to locate documents related to the Second Amendment since it does not contain that term. One of the most intersting things about the center's digital archive of "relevant" documents was that it consisted mostly of state militia laws. Not one of the Second Amendment's state or ratifying convention bill of rights progenitors nor any period discussions concerning them appeared in it.

My research indicates that in the entire forty to fifty thousand pages of existing ratification era documents relating to the U.S. Constitution the term "gun" appeared only two or perhaps three times. Not one page of those ratification era sources appeared in the OSU's Second Amendment Research Center digital archive, not even the few sources that did contain the term "gun". Due to its extremely rare usage in such period sources, the term was not even listed in the index of The Origin of the Second Amendment.

One of those rare period uses still sticks in the mind, though: "riphael-gun".

Monday, November 2, 2009

Clayton Cramer, a professional programmer as well as accomplished Second Amendment historian and author, has been adversely affected by the current economy. He is out of work at the moment and looking for suitable employment.

It was Clayton who first noticed that there were major problems with the historical work of Professor Bellesiles (Emory University), who claimed that there were few firearms in America until the Civil War period. Clayton pursued this until academics became involved forcing Emory to convene a panel of experts that led to the professor's resignation amid charges of academic fraud.

If anyone might be able to help Clayton out in any way, please email him at clayton followed by the at sign followed by claytoncramer.com. (He does not like spambots obtaining his address) His software engineering resume and academic VC are located at claytoncramer.com.